What lurks there in the dark

We have had the tree up for a while – in fact, since the weekend after Thanksgiving. It is a fake tree, because several years back we both realized we were tired of dealing with the mess of a real one, and it has turned out to be a good thing because half the cats in our house feel that the Christmas tree is an awesome toy that must be scaled on a regular basis.

We own a decent collection of beautiful ornaments to put on that tree, but ever since we got Rupert and Ingrid three years ago, we learned the hard way that putting anything breakable on the tree is just a very, very bad idea. Granted, we did have a collection of cheaper, soft ornaments that were always hung on the bottom, since all of our previous cats thought the dangling toys were too tempting, and usually at least one or two of them would be ‘liberated’ through the course of the holiday season. But before getting Rupert and Ingrid, we never had any actual tree climbers.

Rupert and Ingrid were soon joined by Nutmeg in the tree, in 2010, and all three of them continued the trend last year. In 2010, at the after Christmas sales, I picked up a handful of super cheap, nonbreakable ornaments – the sort you can find 10 for a $1 in the clearance bin. They’re not my first choice for decorating, of course – I much prefer the individual ornaments collected over the years – but when one has a trio of tree-climbing cats, one has to make do.

This year, we still have a trio of cats in the tree. Although Ingrid no longer seems to have much interest in climbing it, her place has been taken, quite enthusiastically, by Sherman. This has not surprised us in the slightest, of course. Since pretty much the day we brought Sherman home back in May, Rupert took him under his wing and has made it his mission to teach Sherman *all* of his crazy habits, plus Sherman is still young enough to have plenty of bad habits of his own.

Case in point. This is what happened when we finally put the ornaments on the tree this evening.